The invention relates to a keyboard for recording and/or reproducing written information in a typewriter, word processor, printer, computer or in telecommunications equipment. The invention more particularly relates to such a keyboard for use with a so-called word typewriter, which keyboard has a group of vowel keys in the center, to the left thereof a group of initial consonant keys and to the right thereof a group of final consonant keys. It also has facilities for reproducing capitals of the letters and also reproducing figures and punctuation marks. All keys are connected to an electronic processing unit which, by means of code signals, arranges the information from keys struck approximately or exactly simultaneously into syllables to be recorded or to be reproduced.
Such a keyboard is known from European Patent 53,168. This prior art equipment is based on the principle that only a limited number of consonants is present both in the group of initial consonant keys and in the group of final consonant keys and that the missing consonants are formed by simultaneously depressing a particular combination of consonant keys which are in fact present. The intention of the small number of keys present was to achieve an increase in the typing speed. Despite the fact that an attempt was made to so construct the board and to construct the lettering in a manner differing from the standard typographic configuration such that the combination of two letter keys depressed at the same time which in shape or sound evoke the image of a missing letter, and is processed to form said letter, the result was that it is only possible to operate said known machine after a special training. Even after said training, operating the machine demands a continuous mental effort to think of the correct key combination for the letters which are not immediately recognizable.
Furthermore, in the prior art equipment, a so-called shift key is used which does not, as in the case of the traditional qwerty keyboard, cause the capital version of the letters to appear and, in the case of figure and symbol keys, a different symbol, but with which figures are formed by simultaneously depressing said shift key and letter keys.
In said prior art word typewriter, in order to reproduce the capital version of the letter symbols, a separate bar to be operated with the ball of the hand has to be depressed, but with the complication that said bar only operates as such if it is pressed separately and beforehand, whereas if one or more letter keys which represent initial consonants are depressed at the same time, the letter h is reproduced.
A space bar, also to be operated with the ball of the hand, is complicated to the extent that it only reproduces spaces if it is depressed in the case of letter-after-letter depression, whereas, if it is pressed at the same time as a syllable, it results in said syllable being joined to the preceding syllable; in the latter case it therefore acts in fact as a "no-space bar".
The last mentioned operation also indicates the only way in which the known machine is capable of combining a number of syllables to form a single word. This is difficult to carry out. After all, the limitation of the possibilities thereof is determined by the fact that only one group of consonants is available.
This, and also other drawbacks associated with the known machine, have resulted in a very high psychological acceptance threshold, as a result of which the commercial success of the equipment has remained very limited. In other words, however good the intentions were which lay behind the known equipment, the final result was apparently simple but in fact too complicated to find acceptance on a large scale. This is illustrated by the fact that anyone who has not been trained on said keyboard is usually not even capable of typing his own name.